this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
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I mean. Rationally speaking, shouldn't Biden do something extreme at this moment?
This is one core problem Kamala had. Her message was "Donald Trump is a Nazi," yet the entire Biden administration never treated him like some existential threat to Democracy.
You know all those hypotheticals about killing Adolf Hitler? Notice how no one ever discusses the legality of killing Hitler? It's all discussions of temporal mechanics or the ethics of punishing someone for a crime before they commit it. No one ever says, "no, you obviously shouldn't kill Hitler before he comes to power, as that would have been against German law."
Realistically, if Kamala's rhetoric is factual, Biden should have had Trump arrested on day one of his term, charged in a military tribunal for treason, and convicted and sentenced before the first 100 days were complete. The debate should have been whether to give Trump the death penalty, not whether he had presidential immunity. And what about the Supreme Court? What ABOUT the Supreme Court? Did the Allies give much credence to whatever bullshit rulings the Nazi courts issued? Trump should have been pounded into the dirt, and any SCOTUS justices who dared to intervene should have been charged as accomplices. And anyone remotely involved in the plot should have been similarly purged from civil society. We should have seen hundreds, maybe even thousands, of life sentences.
THAT is how you respond to a threat to democracy. You find absolutely everyone involved and throw the book at them. You move quickly and run roughshod over normal judicial procedure. Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus and imprisoned people for running pro-Confederate newspapers. That is what you have to do in times where democracy is truly threatened.
Does Biden actually believe Trump is literally another Adolf Hitler? Then logically, if that is literally true, then Biden should order the military to take him out. Hell, he should do whatever is necessary, upend the entirety of American democracy, become a full dictator if need be. Better a centrist dictator than a Fascist one. In other words, if Trump is literally Hitler, than Biden should be acting right now like our hypothetical time traveler.
The problem, I believe, is that most Democrats are institutionalists who will defend the rule of law even when it means handing the reigns over to a group who have openly declared hostility towards it. They are also afraid that using any kind of force to stop Trump and his cronies will trigger violent rebellion and they know who owns most of the guns in this country. They're playing a trolley problem game but because they don't really have progressive values they aren't putting, say, Ukraine, Palestine and the entire fucking climate on the "peaceful transfer of power" track.
We need a party with higher values than just "defending institutions."
Bingo.
Unfortunately Biden is a huge fucking pussy who brags about have cookouts with Nazi simps
In response to a post highlighting examples of pointless, hyperbolic copium, this guy walks in and says, "hold my beer" and then advocates for Biden to ("logically") launch a cruise missile at Mar-a-Lago. OMG I'm dying 🤣
"Logically" in the sense that this is the actual logical response, if you take the Biden/Harris rhetoric at face value.
I mean, maybe if you yourself are a Nazi, then you see nothing wrong with letting Nazis in power. But for sane people, if you actually believe someone to be Hitler, then you should do whatever is necessary, damn the law and Constitution, to keep them out of power.
The point is not that this is objectively what Biden should do now. The point is that it is IF you assume Harris's rhetoric is correct, then flagrantly violating the Constitution to keep him out of power is something that should be done. However, realistically, Trump is someone more like Orban or Putin. He does seek to degrade democracy, deport a lot of people, and purposefully immiserate targeted minority groups, but he's not likely to get the Zyklon B off the shelf any time soon. He's a monster, but realistically probably not quite at the level of someone like Hitler.
And this is the problem Harris had in the campaign. If you run on a campaign of "my opponent is Hitler," the voters will rightfully ask, "well, why hasn't your administration already turned him into a fine mist?" You don't put Hitler on trial. You kill Hitler. Running on "my opponent is Hitler," when you haven't treated him like you logically should treat Hitler, shows you really don't believe your own rhetoric.
You're doing a bit of a strawman.
"My opponent is a fascist" =/= "My opponent is Hitler"
Did Harris talk about Trump being a literal copy of Hitler who will genocide millions of people in death camps, or did she assert he's a fascist and a very real threat to democracy?
Because your rhetoric really only works if you know for a fact that Trump is a literal Hitler. We all know him to be a literal autocrat though.
So break democracy to save democracy? Ends justify the means? Hindsight is 2020, so if someone tossed you in a timemachine and you found yourself in the 1920's, you could have the confidence to actually kill Hitler without any qualms, because you'd know what would happen. But no-one has that. We can confidently say Trump is a demented child-rapist who will fuck shit up and make things worse for everyone except his oligarch friends (which very much includes Putin.) We don't know how bad it's gonna get, but it's clearly a downhill the world is facing with a US president like that.
Yes actually. The ends do justify the meansz and democracy should.be suspended for its own protection if necessary; which clearly it is. I'd go further, the whole republican party shouldve been purged. Paradox of tolerance and all that
Lets see here... he's constantly saying to mass deport all "illegal immigrants" and constantly demonizing them. Made statements about arresting all his poltical opponents, with miltary force if nessecary...
I dont know, i dont think the hitler guy every did any of those things...
Of course he did those things. He also breathed, shat and ate. Is everyone who breathes, shits and eats a Hitler?
I can name dozens of non-Hitlers who've done all the things you've said.
Did Harris run with "Trump is an actual Hitler" or "Trump is a dangerous fascist"?
Because if it's the former, then rationally your argument is a strawman and needs to be amended before more rational conversation can take place.
Obviously there can only be one hitler.... noone is saying "litterally hitler" as being absolute as thats impossible. Its merely saying "this person is so unhinged and is aiming to be dictator and commit atrocities of unbelievable proportions"
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
But we're not sure he will "commit atrocities of unbelievable proportions".
He's a demented reality TV-star, but his rhetoric is undeniably fascist and autocratic and he has a very clear history of lying and being extremely self-serving to the point of endangering both American and non-American lives with his ignorance and stupidity.
When Trump became president, he pretty much immediately gave Russia a list of top-US spies, who then started dying. He's clearly dangerous, but is he "let's murder a (more or less) democractically elected president elect of the United States"-dangerous? Should we just go and murder him, for the sake of justice and democracy? No. That would be like curing a headache with a bullet. Yes it would definitely work, but... it's a bit disproportionate.
I'm not saying nothing should be done. I'm saying that straight up murdering someone without due process is a bit over-the-top.
Never said he should be murdered. Im strongly against the state having the power to kill anyone regardless of their crimes. However, he absolutely should have the book thrown at him for all his crimes, insurecctions, hate speech, election interference and whatever else that puts him behind bars for life.
Also, the nazis didnt start out with genocide. First there intention was to rid their problems by mass incarcerating their enemies. Sent them to labor camps for "reeducation". But between the lack of giving a shit about their enemies and lack of resources to keep people alive, those camps quickly turned to death camps.
That I will get behind 100%. Absolutely. I think there's quite a lot to be done within a legal framework to make him face some consequences at least, as long as it's not a total kangaroo court. Which a lot of these seem to have been, what with the oligarchy and corruption and whatnot.
No, they didn't. We could talk all night about how some Germans would have insisted at the end of the war that they didn't know shit about the death-camps or any killings for that matter. Would I have believed any? I doubt it. Would I have been so certain of knowing that they weren't actually lying to me, that I could have taken it upon myself to serve justice on them? I don't think so, no.
It's easy to say that in hindsight, if you had the chance to stop the genocide of tens of millions of people by killing one creepy little Austrian dude who never did any good in his life, you would. But say for the sake of the argument that you right now get a weird time-machine just appear in front of, ready to take you to Braunau am Inn on April 20th, 1889. It also has several gadgets for you to use, rendering you functionally invincible and extremely powerful (so you can do whatever you fucking like without anyone being able to stop you, but not like God levels of power.)
Would you murder that baby Hitler? It's easy to say "yes" if you don't think about it all, but then at least history would change massively. Probably for the better, but perhaps not. As cold as it is, war did bring many advancements as well. Would you even be born, or would a paradox wipe you out if you tried changing anything? Without getting too deep into metaphysics, my point here is that you wouldn't have absolute certainty about what would happen. Perhaps the best thing for humanity would be for you to try and influence Hitler (and/or history in general) more than just straight up murdering a baby?
The point is that you wouldn't have the certainty, so it would be much harder to actually decide what to do, despite us now and here knowing that Hitler was mega-fucking evil and we would want to have been able to prevent the genocides of the 20th century.
A few videos that I thought of while writing this: Killing Hans Sprechter
And this Baby Hitler | DEADPOOL 2 Extended Scene | Ryan Reynolds
But yeah, that's just the absolutes. People don't function in absolutes. I think you make a valid point about some people sort of giving up a bit too much when people should be actually riling up and looking for what can be done about the Trump presidency, legally. But yeah, definitely throw the book, not Molotov cocktails.
We don't need their word for it... they recorded everything they did. They initially did not intend on systemic genocide they ended up doing. That doesn't mean that didn't intend on not doing other atrocities. It's much like people don't intend on torturing and abusing prisoners after being sentenced, but they often look the other way when the guards do it.
if one had the power to do so, one wouldn't need to murder anyone. simply changing the variables that led young Hitler down the road. Preventing his service in WW1 alone would had completely changed the course of history. Or giving him painting lessons so he wouldn't been kicked out of art school.
But thats not really the argument here... we're staring at 1932 Hitler.
My point is individual Germans. If an individual German said "oh we didn't know about the camps", you might believe them. Maybe. Perhaps a kid, at least? But if you liberated a camp in their city, probably not, since it was in their city.
It doesn't matter what they knew. They knew something horrible was happening and wanted to ignore it, which is almost as bad as being directly part of it.
Well doing that would also require for you to know what exactly led to that. It's probably not as simple as you or Family Guy made it out to be. But yeah, so then essentially choosing to remain there to try and make Hitler a better person. Like at the least, preventing his service would mean that you'd either have to disable him in some way or convince him to become a deserter, since they weren't enlisting but were conscripted. Or you'd have to know enough about art to make Hitler a better artist. And as far as paintings go, I don't think I have the same level of skill he did.
Oh yeah 1932 Hitler you'd just shoot in the face. But even then, you wouldn't be able to know for certain that that would only have good effects. Perhaps if we lived in 1950's Europe, it would be quite a lot clearer and less risky, but due to the whole butterfly effect thing, (and this is getting more into the metaphysical than political) you wouldn't even know if you'd exist in the world that would happen. Or perhaps it's a oneway timemachine, and then that worry wouldn't exist. It just really depends on which movie we use for the time-travel rules, really, lol.
If we dial it back from time machines and shooting Hitler in the face to just agreeing to punch fascists in the present?
you're talking about 1940 germans. I'm talking about 1932 Germans. years before shit went to hell.
🤣